At Incredible Health, our vision and mission is to help healthcare professionals live better lives, and find and do their best work. That means understanding the conditions shaping their work, not just the bright spots, but the pressure points, the gaps, and the places where the healthcare industry has more work to do.
Today, we’re proud to release our 2026 Executive Report: AI and the Future of the Healthcare Workforce. Drawing on insights from hundreds of healthcare leaders and proprietary data from more than 1,500 healthcare employers and 1.5 million healthcare workers nationwide, this report is our most comprehensive look yet at where the industry stands heading into a pivotal year.
The challenge this year is not AI awareness. It’s execution.
Healthcare leaders are aligned on the priorities. Retention is the top workforce concern for 67% of organizations. AI is widely understood to be critical, with more than half of leaders saying it will define their team’s success in 2026, and 47% planning to increase AI spending this year.
And yet, 76% of the same leaders say their organizations are not prepared to implement AI at the speed required. Change management is difficult. Ownership is unclear. Role-based adoption has stalled. The result is a widening gap between what leaders believe and what their organizations are able to execute, at a moment when there is very little room for delay.
This is the defining tension of 2026: plenty of vision, and a critical shortage of follow-through.
The technology hasn’t reached the healthcare workers who need it most.
AI momentum in healthcare has largely been concentrated in leadership conversations, recruitment platforms, and back-office systems. On the frontlines, the picture looks very different. Today, 70% of clinicians are not using AI tools in their daily workflows, even as 80% say they want more training on how to use them.
This disconnect is a care delivery problem as much as a technology problem. The workers experiencing the greatest pressure from burnout, staffing shortages, and rising patient demand are the same workers who have benefited least from the AI investment being made around them. Closing that gap is one of the most important things healthcare organizations can do in the year ahead.
Recruiters are overwhelmed, and qualified candidates are disappearing into the void.
The talent challenge extends well beyond the bedside. Only 16% of healthcare recruiters currently use AI in their workflows. Managing an average of 70 open roles per recruiter at a time, most teams are only able to have a live conversation with roughly 10% of applicants. The other 90% of workers who apply to open positions do not speak with anyone.
At the same time, the pool of candidates passing initial screens has dropped from 34% to 29% year over year. Hiring demand is rising, while recruitment capacity is not keeping pace. Over the past 12 months, 55% of teams stayed the same size and 21% shrank. Only 24% grew. Today, 41% of recruitment teams describe themselves as overworked.
This is a system under strain, and it is costing organizations far more than efficiency. Every unanswered application from qualified healthcare workers quietly shapes how an employer is perceived in the market. The hiring experience is an expression of organizational values, and right now, many organizations are leaving a very different impression than they intend.
Retention is the strategic lever hiding in plain sight.
As we look ahead, it is clear that retention and recruitment are not separate challenges. They are deeply connected. Organizations struggling to keep experienced clinicians face constant pressure to rehire, driving up costs and compounding strain on the teams left behind. With 33% of employers reporting that at least a quarter of their nursing workforce is within 5 years of retirement, the pressure will intensify.
The healthcare organizations that lead in 2026 will be the ones that elevate retention from an HR function to a core expression of workforce strategy. That means investing in flexible scheduling, visible career pathways, and day-to-day working conditions that make healthcare workers want to stay.
The path forward is focused action.
This report pairs diagnosis with prescription. Inside, we outline 4 specific areas where healthcare leaders can move from intent to impact: 1) phased AI implementation with clear ownership and measurable outcomes, 2) retention-first workforce design, 3) protecting recruiter capacity as hiring demand rises, and 4) building a candidate experience that earns trust from the very first interaction.
The healthcare organizations that will define this decade are the ones willing to close the gap between their stated priorities and their operational reality. The ones that move with focus this year will not just weather the pressure. They will be the ones everyone else is benchmarking against in 5 years.You can read the full 2026 Executive Report here.
